


Seasons in the Sun

by jeffersonhairpin



Series: No Lies, Just Love [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: (not really attempted but real fear), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Dementia, Depression, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Relapse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:27:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22504801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffersonhairpin/pseuds/jeffersonhairpin
Summary: When Sami dies, leaving Annella with dementia and without a caretaker, Elio and Oliver return to Crema, where Elio slowly finds himself falling into old habits he hasn't felt the pull of in decades.(Set twenty years after the events of 'No Lies, Just Love'. Can probably be read alone but makes much more sense if you read the first in the series first)
Relationships: Annella Perlman/Samuel Perlman, Oliver/Elio Perlman
Series: No Lies, Just Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619161
Comments: 44
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty, sad times! But I promise a happy ending <3

It’s relatively quiet most days when Oliver gets home to the villa. It’s been unusually quiet in general since the funeral. 

Usually he’ll come in and put down his bag to find that Annella has been taken to bed and Elio is sitting in front of the TV, not paying attention to what’s happening on the screen as he smokes and scrolls listlessly through his phone – barely paying attention to that either. 

He looks so tired when Oliver enters the room, he just wants to scoop him up and carry him to bed – but at fifty-one and forty-four that’s not really an option anymore. 

“Hey,” he says instead, leaning down to kiss Elio’s forehead before taking the cigarette from his fingers and putting it out in the ashtray on the coffee table. “You promised you’d stop.”

“I did,” he concedes exhaustedly.

“How was she today?”

“The same as she always is. Out of it, needed help doing basic things, quiet.”

As Elio rubs a hand over his face Oliver makes a note to stop asking about Annella when he comes home, at least not right away… it just reminds Elio of everything that’s gone wrong and sours their short time together in the evenings – short because of Oliver’s now-necessary hour-long commute to and from the nearest university to Crema each day. 

He should change the subject.

“Have you eaten?” 

“Yeah,” Elio lies, feeling like the effort of trying to cook or eat would be too much. 

“Wanna come with me while I make something anyway?” Oliver coaxes gently.

But Elio just sighs and shakes his head, sending Oliver an apologetic look. 

“Not really; sorry…” When Elio looks up to see Oliver’s defeated face he gives him the best measly smile he can manage and says, “Make something and come eat sitting with me.”

Oliver just nods and goes to the kitchen, unable to shake the horrible familiarity of Elio’s entire state of being, in the past two months since they moved back to Crema. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but it’s not the happy person he’s known Elio to be for the last twenty years and Oliver doesn’t want to think about how bad things could get with Elio just left alone with the shadow of his mother all through the days…

They should have seen this coming, should have predicted this would start to happen in this situation, but Elio hasn’t had more than a few bad days in a row since he got off of his antidepressants so long ago. He’s not had problems with alcohol since he stopped feeling like he needed it to treat his depression either… 

_God, so much could go wrong if he stays down like this…_

But it doesn’t feel so scary when he sits down next to Elio with his tray between them, and faces his love as he picks at the simple bread and cheese he’s laid out. He even manages to coax Elio into eating a little bit out of his hands because he suspects that, in fact, he hasn’t actually eaten tonight. When they’re done he places the tray on his other side and shuffles over to Elio, and his husband wraps himself up in his offered embrace. 

He’s always felt safest like this, with the thing that matters most to him held safely between his arms.

“Why are you watching C-SPAN?” Oliver murmurs into his love’s hair.

“Wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Why not?”

“Was on my phone.”

“Well what were you looking at on there?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

Oliver sighs.

“Are you—”

“Please don’t ask me if I’m okay,” Elio pleads. “I’m not. I know I haven’t exactly been enthusiastic tonight but I really don’t want to talk about it. It was a bad day. Can we just pretend tonight?”

Elio knows it’s obvious he’s not doing well. Taking care of Annella full time – relieved only by the nurse who comes in to take care of medical check-ups and bathing every other day – is exhausting, and more and more he finds himself slipping into the way things felt so many years ago just after Oliver left… not really slipping, if he’s honest. Slipped.

But he doesn’t want to talk about it right now when he has his amazing husband right in front of him for a few hours, before they go to bed and he wakes up to feed his mother breakfast because she can’t always do it herself, again. 

“Okay,” Oliver agrees simply, and Elio is eternally grateful for his understanding. “We can pretend.”

Elio just turns to face Oliver and places a gentle kiss on his lips, but it quickly turns heated as Oliver fights to give it life. When Elio responds to his fervour a note of desperation comes into it – Elio’s desperation to feel something, _anything_ other than the dull monotony he’s lived in since his father died…

They end up entangled on the floor, grateful for the thick rug as they lay in the afterglow of a hurried, gasping climax. Quickly though, Elio finds himself fighting to stay in that glow rather than falling even further back to earth than if they’d never done anything at all. 

After a minute he gives up the fight and sits up. He pulls his knees up and sits with his fingers pressed into his eye sockets, trying to keep it together. Immediately Oliver is up.

“You don’t have to hold it back if you’re going to cry, Elio. You know that.”

His voice is sympathetic but Elio just lets out a strange, half-tearful, half-frustrated groan.

“But I don’t _want_ to cry,” he insists. “I want to enjoy post-coital bliss with my fucking husband and I don’t know why I can’t.”

Oliver kisses his shoulder gently.

“You do know why,” he murmurs understandingly, getting up and holding his hand out for Elio to take. 

When they’re both standing Oliver pulls them together so they’re embraced skin to skin, no barrier between them, nothing but love.

“I love you, Oliver,” he says softly, as he always has in Elio’s dark moments.

When he receives a sighed, “I love you, Elio,” back, the tension in his chest eases just a little.

A few weeks later it’s no better. In fact it’s much worse. He’s been trying to hide it but there’s no doubt in Oliver’s mind that Elio is clinically depressed again for the first time in twenty years; he figures it’s just a matter of time before Elio brings it up and they do something. 

The root causes – his father’s sudden death and his mother’s subsequent need for a caretaker – aren’t going away anytime soon, so he’s not entirely sure how they’ll deal with it this time, but Elio is disappearing again – physically and emotionally, each encouraging the other.

Oliver wakes silently in the morning and doesn’t disturb his husband as he gets ready, leaving him to the sleep that has been far kinder to him than reality recently. When it’s time for him to go he gives him a gentle shake of his shoulder, whispering.

“Elio, it’s time to wake up, it’s eight o’clock.”

They went to bed around ten so Oliver’s been up for two hours, but he swears if he didn’t wake Elio up every morning he’d sleep fourteen hours a day. He’s been sleeping so much that he’s even more tired for it, and Oliver is always torn between knowing that it’s best for Elio to wake him up, and not having the heart to tear him from his dreams to pull him into a nightmarish reality. 

Elio moves his head slowly, instantly frowning.

“Nng,” he groans.

“Did you hear me?” Oliver asks, not whispering anymore. “Annella is probably awake.”

Instantly Elio deflates with a sigh. 

“Can you get her up?”

Oliver thinks for a moment. 

“Yes, but I don’t have time to do breakfast for her, so you’ll need to stay awake,” Oliver bargains.

“Fine,” Elio sighs again, closing his eyes to block out the sun.

Oliver does as he said he would and gets Annella up, taking her to the bathroom and getting her settled at the kitchen table with a newspaper she can only sometimes read, until Elio comes to occupy her. It breaks Oliver’s heart to see the woman he’s thought of as his surrogate mother sliding backwards like this, but he knows it must be nothing compared to what Elio feels, especially seeing her like this all day, every day.

With how depressed he’s been and how sluggish it’s made him in past, it’s clear how much he cares, that he finds the will to help her patiently – mentally and physically – every single day… That said, when Oliver goes back into their bedroom he’s asleep again. He lets out a small huff and walks around the bed again.

“Elio,” he says again, shaking him with both hands, harder this time. He really does need to go. “You need to wake up.”

He frowns again and pulls a hand up against the sunlight.

“What?” he slurs, still barely conscious.

Oliver just grabs both of his hands and pulls his husband up to a sitting position on the bed.

“I need to go or I’m going to be late. Annella’s at the table waiting to eat breakfast. I took her to the bathroom, so you don’t need to do that, but you need to get up, now.”

Oliver’s tone will never stop having that hint of sympathy, but he knows Elio needs him to be firm now, to wake him up.

He leans down to give his love a kiss on the top of his head. When he leans back up Elio wraps his arms around his waist and rests his head against his stomach, enjoying the warmth for a moment. 

“I love you,” he says simply. Even if he doesn’t want to do anything in the mornings and it’s Oliver who has to force him to get up and do what needs to be done, Elio is never going to hold that against him.

Oliver just runs a hand through his husband’s dishevelled hair and says, “I love you too – you need a haircut,” before pulling back, kissing him quickly and rushing out the door. 

Elio knows that if he lays back down for even a second he could be lost to the world for hours more, and it’s only the thought of his famished mother trying to make her way unsteadily to the kitchen and falling, or accidentally blowing the house up by mishandling the stove, that gets him up and dressed.

He slaps his face hard a couple of times, muttering, “Wake the fuck up, Elio,” before putting on a tight smile for his mother as he enters the dining room.

“Who are you?” she asks, confused. 

Elio has answered this question so many times he’s impervious to it now.

“I’m the chef,” he lies with ease. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Oh,” she accepts, still confused but finding herself without enough information to argue that he’s not her chef. “French toast I suppose, if you’re a chef.”

Elio sighs. Some days she just wants cereal or jam toast and those are by far the best mornings for him. The chef explanation is the fastest but he pays for it whenever she asks for something fancy.

“Where’s Mafalda?”

Elio closes his eyes and sighs. His mother remembers Mafalda but not her own son.

“She’s on holiday. I’ll be just a moment with the toast.”

He shuffles to the kitchen, going immediately for the fridge.

He’s not lying to himself and saying that it’s acceptable to have a _morning_ drink in the _morning_ when he pours himself a mimosa that’s only about a drop orange juice. He knows why he’s doing it, he just doesn’t see much point in doing anything else if he has to go through this every day indefinitely. 

He’s perhaps lying to himself when he says it’s okay to fuck up if it’s only _one _morning drink… but he thinks he deserves it and it’s not like he does it so early _every_ day.__

____

He knows he’s not on solid ground with it like he has been, for twenty years, but he’s not waking up vomiting or in a pool of his own piss, so it’s all just… whatever, by comparison. It’s not the same. 

____

He can’t really get himself to react to it all. He knows he’s been there before, but he struggles to react to that, as well. When Oliver hints at wanting to talk about it in the evenings he placates him with lies and moves on, and he’s not sure why he does that either. 

____

Some days he just feels like a ghost whose only purpose is to keep a woman who scarcely recognises him occupied by brushing her hair and reading to her and helping her with her food until Oliver gets home to breathe a little bit of life into him for a few hours. 

____

The last thing he wants to talk about during the times when he’s okay is the times when he’s not okay. Perhaps that’s why he lies. Yes, that makes sense.

____

Either way Elio figures if his parents’ old wine collection slowly disappears as he watches his disappearing mother slip into the ground, it’s only fitting for his disappearing life. He shakes his head and takes a sip of his drink to clear his spiralling thoughts as he goes about making some goddamn French toast.

____

____

____

Oliver has been the balm that soothes Elio when he gets home over the weeks and months of his descent, but alarm bells start going off dully in the back of Elio’s mind when he finds himself itching for a drink even when Oliver is around, like he used to. He loves Oliver with all that he is but it just feels like he can’t often convert that into happiness or even being okay anymore, even with his _everything_ standing right in front of him

____

He senses it’s only so long before he’s back to sneaking drinks in the fucking bathroom. It feels like it’s looming, only a short string of bad decisions away.

____

At this point he’s resisting as best he can every day, but he knows he’s pretty much back on it… It just feels as though as long as Oliver doesn’t know, he’s not doing anything wrong. It’s not like last time, when he was begging _figure it out, figure it out_ – if Oliver figures it out everything that’s wrong will be the same except Oliver will be disappointed and will probably find some way to make him stop and then he’ll have to suffer through his incredibly depressing days without even the choice of a drop of help to take the edge off.

____

It’s not like they can’t afford a pretty much full-time caretaker but the thought of his confused mother being placated by a stranger who might not know her well enough to help is… no. It has to be Elio. So he has to do what he can to cope.

____

____

____

It’s just like last time; over time he just stops caring a little bit too much, is a little bit too risky with it, and Oliver begins to suspect – only this time he’s far more willing to pursue what he suspects, slowly but surely. 

____

“Have you been having red wine with dinner?” Oliver asks after one brief welcome-home kiss.

____

“Yeah,” Elio says dismissively, and it’s not entirely untrue to confirm it; it’s just that he’s been having red wine _for_ dinner instead of with it.

____

It’s been long enough that Elio hasn’t had any issues with alcohol without his depression, that it’s not the unlikeliest thing in the world for him to have a glass of red wine with dinner simply because it pairs well. He’s just usually made it a point not to do it alone, out of habit. It instantly stands out to Oliver as unusual, especially several days in a row, but again, it’s just been so long he’s been absolutely fine… he figures he’ll give Elio the benefit of the doubt.

____

_Surely he’d come to me with it this time?_

____

____

____

A week or two later – Elio is finding it difficult to know or care about the date or the day of the week – he’s a little too risky again. He’s standing in the kitchen, most of the way drunk, reading the same page over and over again, when he hears Oliver’s car door slam shut. 

____

He instantly downs the last half of his generous glass and swishes some water in it before placing it back, hanging upside down on the glassware rack. Moments later Oliver comes in, placing his jacket and bag on the dining table and striding over to give his husband a homecoming kiss, happy to see him not just sitting in front of a TV he’s not paying attention to. 

____

But his happiness sours at the recently all-too-familiar scent of red wine and the small, burgundy stain on Elio’s shirt. Usually the smell is faint enough that Oliver can believe it was just for dinner, but it’s still strong and fresh, and with the stain and Elio’s slightly guilty look, Oliver sighs and closes his eyes as he pulls back.

____

“What?” Elio says defensively, though he knows exactly what. He’s a little too intoxicated to deflect effectively.

____

Oliver looks to the side and spies the still-dripping wine glass, hanging. 

____

“Elio…” he trails off. 

____

“What?” Elio says again, but there’s no heat in it. 

____

He knows he’s found out, but he’s not going to give up the fight until Oliver says the words himself.

____

“How bad is it?” 

____

Elio has honestly had a miraculously normal relationship with alcohol for many years now, so it’s only because Oliver knows he’s truly depressed again that he’s so quick to jump to this particular question. 

____

“How bad is what?” Elio asks in one last desperate attempt, but his words are becoming a little soft around the edges with that last glass and it only makes the problem more crystal clear.

____

“You’re drinking, Elio.”

____

The words sit heavy in the air for what feels like an eternity.

____

“Maybe,” Elio says after a while. “Am I not allowed to have a glass of wine with dinner?”

____

“I think we both know this wasn’t with dinner and it was more than a glass. You reek of it and there’s a stain on your shirt.”

____

Oliver’s voice isn’t harsh but it certainly isn’t forgiving as he gestures to the stain. Elio looks down at his shirt and swears before speaking, his words still slightly off with drink.

____

“I dunno what you want me to say, Oliver.”

____

Honestly, Oliver hasn’t seen Elio drink enough for his speech to be affected in… he can’t even remember. So many alarms are going off in his head but he holds it all back for his love.

____

“I want you to say something to me _before_ it gets here,” he insists, coming closer to show Elio that he’s not angry with him precisely, just scared and frustrated. His first instinct with this has never been anger. 

____

“I'm worried about you... If you’re not okay, I need you to tell me.”

____

Elio’s response however, _is_ angry, his passion making his words come out clear. It’s the most passion he’s felt in weeks as he finally expresses everything he’s been thinking but not saying, even to himself.

____

“Of course I’m not fucking _okay_ Oliver! How could I _possibly_ be okay? My dad died which meant I had to drop my whole life and all my friends to move to another country to take care of my dying mother, which means I have nothing to do all day but sit around with the ghost of who my mother _used_ to be and pretend it doesn’t make me want to _fucking kill myself!”_

____

Even after so many years with no sign of depression, Elio’s last words send an electric thrill of pure fear through Oliver. Even then he always said he wouldn’t actually do it because Oliver was there, but what if that’s changed?

____

There’s a moment where Elio realises what he’s said and how true it all is, and in the next instant he’s bursting into tears, only prevented from falling to the floor by Oliver’s suddenly-present arms which gently lower them both down. 

____

He cried a little at the funeral but nothing real, like this. Mostly he was worrying about taking care of his mother, who didn’t quite seem to understand what was happening. 

____

It all falls out of him now – how desperately lonely he’s been, how exhausted, how bored, how cut off from every good emotion, every good thought…

____

He never thought he’d be drunk and crying on the floor with Oliver again. He’s thought this part of his life was behind him for so long, but here he is again. 

____

Truthfully though, he’s never thought that he had some iron will not to fall back into it again that would last for the rest of his life… it’s just that after that time, his life with Oliver has gone so well that he hasn’t been tested again and part of him figured he never would be again... but now here it is, and he feels like he’s utterly failed; is utterly fail _ing._

____

“It—” Oliver says when the crying has slowed to a trickle. “It makes you want to kill yourself?” 

____

All the horrifying images that used to keep Oliver up at night cross his mind again. The fear of coming home one night to Elio hanging from a rope, Elio with his blood all over the floor, Elio prone and helpless, choking on his own vomit after one night’s two-bottle mistake… Elio-dead, Elio-dead, Elio-dead... 

____

The thought that even if he could make him smile or laugh when they were together - even if the last time he saw him they were cuddling up and trading sweet, contented kisses - that there was something unpredictable and volatile inside of him that could erase all of that in an instant and make him want to- 

“I didn’t mean it,” the younger man says, interrupting his thoughts, but he only half means it when he says that. 

____

“Didn’t you?” Oliver doubts.

____

“...I don’t know.”

____

Against his better judgement Elio thinks that perhaps he should be honest, clinging to Oliver’s arm around him.

____

“I just don’t feel like there’s anything to feel good about anymore. Every day I wake up and there’s just nothing good ahead and no sign of that changing. It’s only going to get worse until she dies and I’m going to cry and grieve again even though she’s really already gone, and then even if I get better again, one day you’re going to die and it’ll be just like this only worse because I won’t have you coming home to me to make it even a little bit better and then I just feel like… I want to just bow out now before it declines any further. I don’t want to actually kill myself but I wake up to _that_ every single day so I’ve been trying to make it easier by….” 

____

Elio trails off and slumps down out of Oliver’s arms, putting his head in his hands. 

____

“Fuck, I haven’t felt like this in so long...”

____

“Is it... is it like before?” 

____

Oliver feels useless just asking questions when he feels like he should be comforting his husband, but he doesn’t know how to help without a lay of the land. 

____

Elio huffs a little laugh. “Which part.”

____

“The drinking.” Oliver isn’t playing games with his words.

____

“No,” Elio sighs. “It wasn’t even every day until recently. I’ve been trying to tough it out as best I can but… I don’t know, something changed and now it is every day, even though it’s not a lot necessarily…. I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it’s worth fighting it right now since it’s not that much, and things just aren’t going to be okay for a long time. And there’s nothing either of us can do about that.”

____

Elio sounds torn between serene acceptance and crushing defeat, but Oliver is having none of it.

____

“Yes there is,” he insists incredulously. “You can go see your doctor again, you can talk to someone, we can lock up all the alcohol again like we did before; there are so many things we can do before just giving up to watch it gradually get worse. Because you know it will.”

____

Elio just sighs. All he can see is the problems with each of those things – it all just feels impossible. It’s been so long he’s struggling to remember how he slid down last time or why he needed to be so careful with himself for so long afterwards…

____

“Can you just give me a chance to try to get it under control first?” Elio asks, looking up at Oliver with pleading eyes. “I promise I'll tell you about it from now on, I just want to stop talking about this right now… When you’re home it’s the only time I get to relax and be. Can we just do that?”

____

“…Okay,” Oliver says but he doesn’t hide his reluctance. “For now, but we’re talking later.”

____

He takes Elio up the stairs and lays him out on the bed on his front, giving his love a warm, caring massage complete with oils. By the time he’s done two hours have passed and Elio is sound asleep, not even awoken when Oliver wipes off the oils and pulls him further up on the bed to sleep. 

____

Oliver is still very much afraid as he tries to sleep. Elio immediately went to talking about wanting to kill himself in their conversation, and even if he doesn’t truly want to he’s not talked like that since their time in New York. 

____

Things cannot get to that point again.

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me a comment with thoughts on how it should go! This one won't be as long as the first but it'll still have an arc :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of sadness in this one, but I promise this is the low point. Only one more chapter I think.
> 
> (Warning for suicidal thoughts, suicidal ideation, real shit at least in the context of this character)

The next day Elio does truly try to stop, and chooses to chain-smoke instead as he used to do here when he was getting sober, choosing nicotine as the lesser of two evils despite what everyone knows about cigarettes nowadays. 

Annella remembers enough today to ask him to play for her, so without thinking he perches his cigarette on the side of the ashtray and sits at the piano, beginning to play the Bach he played for Oliver here so long ago. By halfway through, he’s engrossed in remembering how he felt that summer and he’s brought to a moment of joy at the memory before suddenly his brain connects it to how he feels now. 

It feels like sitting in your house alone after all the guests have left the party. It feels like the difference between the beautiful potential of the beginning and the wretched wasting of the dragged out end.

He just starts crying, stopping playing to hunch over and sob, hiding his face from the world. These crying jags just creep up on him; one moment he’s feeling nothing at all and the next he’s feeling everything all at once, as though he was just saving it up all day. One moment he doesn’t care about anything much at all and the next it’s like the world is ending and there’s no point in sticking around to burn with it.

He just wants to burrow away and sleep but he can’t because he needs to keep an eye on his confused mother behind him, asking why he’s crying. When he doesn’t answer he can hear her attempting to get up to comfort the man she vaguely remembers as her son, and he has to turn around, tears and all, to stop her.

“Don’t get up mom, you’ll hurt yourself,” he insists tiredly through the wetness of his tears. 

“What’s wrong _bambino?”_

“Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry about it.”

“But you’re crying,” she persists, wiping his face. 

There’s no point in explaining it to her – she’ll only forget – so he just curls up with his head on his mother’s lap to let her comfort herself by comforting him. He’ll never get to confide in his mother again – it feels like he’s done everything important for the last time. He has no children of his own, his family will die off, it’s all coming to a close…

After a minute or two he feels the call of sleep, like his mind is rescuing him from the thought that all things that matter are coming to an end... He can sleep like this; it’ll wake him up if she tries to move somewhere or do anything stupid.

As he falls asleep he wishes he could forget, like his mother.

_Maybe I should just go and bash my brains in getting hit by a car or falling off of something tall so my mind doesn’t work properly anymore. And then Oliver will have to take care of me as I drool and forget things and maybe he’ll understand why I take the edge off…_

_What a horrible thing to think,_ the other part of his mind replies as he drifts off. 

He dreams of burying his mother, watching her coffin lower slowly into the ground. He dreams of the sick relief he’ll feel at her death, as though he’s in a horror movie and someone has finally shot the zombie living in his mother’s corpse.

He dreams of himself in another twenty years, taking care of Oliver as his father took care of his mother before he died. He dreams of watching his husband’s bright intellectualism slip away from him, of having to help him wash, of having to feed him like a child…

He dreams that he dies the same way his father did, but with no one around to notice or help Oliver. He dreams of his own body decaying as his confused, scared husband slowly starves to death in his chair unable to help himself…

He jolts awake not ten minutes later – he can still feel the tracks where his tears were as fresh ones appear. It’s quickly apparent that his mother has fallen asleep as well, because she startles and asks, “Who are you?”. 

It’s too much. 

“One second,” Elio says absently through his panicked grief as he strides towards the kitchen, pulling one of their old whiskies from the rack. Before he knows it the cork is off and he’s four swigs deep – he’s not tasted whisky in twenty years but the motions are still somehow familiar. 

He finds himself sitting at the table tapping a finger and waiting for the relief of the alcohol hitting him, and it occurs to him that he used to do this every morning. An aborted bolt of what should be fear shoots through him at the thought, but as usual it just can’t quite get to his mind to convince him to stop. 

He needs to not be feeling all the things his nightmare wants him to feel… In a way this giving in feels like a rebellion against his fear and depression, illogical as he knows it may be.

When he feels the liquor beginning to affect him he re-joins his mother, choosing a book at random and beginning to read to her. It seems to soothe her in her confusion, and it certainly soothes him. Through the haze of the drink it’s such an effort to read with normal cadence and clarity that he truly can’t think of anything else. 

When it comes time for Annella’s dinner he doesn’t ask what she wants, just makes her a sandwich and sits at the table with a glass of wine answering the usual confused questions and half participating in the conversation until she’s ready for bed.

After she’s safely tucked away, Elio refills his glass and returns to the table. He’s not going to hide from Oliver and he’s not sure if it’s because he doesn’t care or because he does; it’s hard to access his higher reasoning right now.

Elio doesn’t look up when he hears Oliver enter the room, or when he hears him sigh. 

Oliver joins him at the table and sits with his arms folded, leaning in.

“So what are we going to do about this?” Oliver asks, not leaving open any possibility of waiting any longer if his husband can’t hold it together on the first day of trying to control it.

“Whatever you want, I don’t care. I can’t—” Elio begins, but cuts himself off to shake his head and swirl his wine before lifting it to his lips. He still hasn’t met Oliver’s eyes, hasn’t looked up from the table he seems to be looking through.

Oliver can’t say he’s not alarmed by Elio’s apathy but he supposes it’s better than resistance on this issue. 

“Well, in that case we’re going to get a caretaker in for Annella and you’re going to the doctor,” he says factually. It’s not a suggestion, it’s just what’s going to happen. 

Elio says nothing. 

“How much have you drunk today?” Oliver asks, and it’s hard to tell if he sounds disappointed or sympathetic. 

At that Elio does seem to react, looking to the side as he thinks.

“…Four glasses of wine and about… four mouthfuls of whisky. Since one.”

 _“Whisky?”_ Oliver asks, incredulous and alarmed. Elio hasn’t had whisky since… since. “Why, what happened at one?”

Finally Elio’s lip trembles and his grief and fear float to the surface of the calm lake that his subdued emotions have been this afternoon.

“I had a dream that mom died and then you got it too and I had to take care of you but then I died like dad did but no one knew and you were so confused and lost and all you could do was watch me decompose as you starved to death not knowing what was happening except that it was horrifying. It was so awful, I couldn’t even—”

“Oh, Jesus,” Oliver says as he stands and moves to the other side of the table to comfort his crying husband, who has buried his face in his hands. But he realises that in that moment Elio needs words much more than he needs embrace. Oliver takes his love’s hands in his own, looking up into his eyes from where he’s kneeling.

“Elio, that’s not going to happen. It’s not.” But he can see he doesn’t believe the logic. “I know you can’t see it right now but things aren’t just going to keep getting worse and worse forever. You’re sick, again. You just need help... It worked last time.”

At first he seems to be willing to believe Oliver but at his last words Elio shakes his head, his tears returning in full force.

“It’s not _like_ last time. You came _back_ last time. They’re never coming back, they’re always going to be gone so I don’t know how I’m ever going to stop feeling this way… what’s the point?”

Now Elio does need embrace, sobbing into his husband’s shoulder, digging his fingers into the skin so hard it’ll probably leave bruises. Oliver just shushes him gently until he’s cried out and can listen.

“Even if you feel that way we’re still going to try. We’re going to get your mom a caretaker so you don’t have that to think about on top of everything else every day.”

Elio shakes his head again.

“But I don’t want her taken care of by a stranger,” his voice wobbles. Oliver sighs sympathetically, pushing Elio’s hair behind his ears.

“You’ll still be here, Elio. If she’s scared and needs a familiar face you’ll still be around to make her feel better. I don’t know what you’re imagining a caretaker would be like, but these people are trained to do this. And if you can’t stay okay and sober while taking care of her full time, then you can’t do it. You just can’t.”

Elio puts a hand to his face and leans forward, pained.

“I should be able to take care of my own mother.”

“Getting someone in to help when you can’t do it is taking care of her, Elio.”

He clearly doesn’t believe him but as he nods, to Oliver it feels like progress.

Elio does drink less with someone around to help, mostly because he manages to hold off by sleeping or smoking in the yard, away from all the sights that make him itch for a glass in his hand.

But without the responsibility of taking care of Annella, there are so many things that fall even further by the wayside. He doesn’t even need to bother getting dressed now that his mother won’t question his clothing as a stranger in her house. He doesn’t bother with getting changed or showering until Oliver makes him - it’s not like he needs to be attractive anyway, he’s not interested in sex. 

Oliver makes a point of waking Elio up before he goes, forcing him to get up and at least pick at some breakfast with him… but he knows Elio just goes back to sleep ask soon as he’s gone. There’s just nothing he can do about it at that point. 

He hates the smoking too, but that he can sort of do something about. They’ve only got the one car, so with Oliver taking it to the university Elio is at least forced to take one of the old bikes to town if he wants another pack. Sunshine and exercise are good for depression, Oliver knows, so there’s that. 

The downside to only having the one car, however, is that Elio can only go to the doctor whenever the car is home. Which is on weekends. Which is when the nearest doctor isn’t open.

Oliver is trying to arrange for a day off soon to take him but it’s a busy time at the university and he’s new there so he can’t exactly demand time off.

Elio knows he should be doing something with his days in the meantime but he just can’t seem to get out of bed, out of his chair, up from his spot in the shade, to do it. He knows he could be practicing, composing, transposing as he used to, but he just… can’t. 

The most time-consuming task of all would be going through his father’s old things – and really his mother’s too – and starting to decide what to keep and what to throw away… But he’s fairly certain that if he starts without Oliver while he’s feeling weak like this he’ll just end up drinking his memories away again. 

Not that he doesn’t drink, but he at least pretends it’s a part of the palette of the meal he’s picking at, limiting himself to the approximate hours of lunch and dinner. It’s not like he goes crazy with it, he reasons.

The caretaker sometimes gives him these _looks_ like she thinks he’s just this woman’s lazy, indulgent, inattentive son who can’t be bothered to take care of his dying mother between naps, drinks, and cigarettes while living in her house… but it’s nothing he’s not thinking about himself, so it barely registers to him. Everything just rolls off of him when he can sleep, smoke, drink it away.

Even when he’s not thinking about his parents he’s still just stewing in this atmosphere he can’t escape, like his life is over and he’s not supposed to be here anymore. Even when he’s not thinking about why, some part of his mind is always aware that everything has changed, and everything is worse now.

It gets a little worse by degrees until Marzia comes over the next Monday to have a quick lunch while she’s on her break at work. She insists she’s been meaning to come by since the funeral.

The caretaker only works four days a week and this week Monday is the day she’s taken off, so they all sit out back with Annella. At first Marzia insists she can help Annella while Elio eats but it quickly becomes apparent that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing or how to interact with Annella. Elio takes over, his hands expertly completing the job in practiced motions. Marzia is fascinated by the way Elio is so gentle and patient with Annella while also being so quietly but clearly frustrated.

In Italy, lunch with a friend naturally means wine – but it usually means one glass. Not the liberally poured two she’s seen Elio down, or the generous third he’s pouring now. She hadn’t batted an eye at the first glass – she knows Elio had a problem many, many years ago, but she’s shared a wine or a cocktail with him and Oliver many times since, so she just figured it would never come back. 

But it seems it might have. 

If so the cause is clear from the way he tries to hide his grief behind his glass every time Annella says something confused, or wrong in the context. _It can’t be easy to be around that all day…_ Marzia thinks, grateful for her parents’ good health, _…but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to for him to just backslide._

“Elio”, she calls with sad eyes across the table as he finishes his ample pour, meeting his gaze and looking down at the glass before looking back up. 

In that moment their entire history seems to lie out before Marzia. She remembers Elio as her best friend and then as someone who slept all day and barely spoke. As someone who did nothing but work and barely spoke, and then as someone who apparently drank himself nearly to death for two years in America while she wasn’t looking. As someone with a full life and a partner who loved him, and then now... she’s not entirely sure what, but she can’t help but compare this man before her, with the day old stubble and the dark bags beneath his eyes, to the precocious boy full of mischief who she lost her virginity with. 

For all her thought all she says is, “Does Oliver know about that?”

Annella’s confused “Know about what?” only derails them for a moment while they assure her that it’s nothing to worry about, Elio gently patting her hand. She returns to her reading.

“Yes,” Elio sighs, sitting back in his chair, not bothering to deny that it’s something Oliver should know about, or claim it’s just very good wine. 

“Is it because you are depressed again?”

Elio leans forward and pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, sighing before looking up to the sky and leaning back again. He’s not going to cry, but the slightly dead look in his eyes when he turns to her frightens Marzia more than that.

“Yes the depression is back,” he says through a sigh, matter-of-factly. 

In the back of Marzia’s mind she wonders why Elio has been so drawn to alcohol each time his life has become difficult in this way. It’s only ever made her more sad when she’s been sad… though she’s heard that depression is not the same as sadness. She doesn’t say any of that, pushing forward.

“What are you going to do?” she asks, feeling out of her depth and a little frightened in the face of something she doesn’t understand. Elio doesn’t seem to share her feelings, having been through it before.

He shrugs, seeming not to care very much.

“I mean we’ve got the caretaker in four days a week so it’s only me doing most of it one day which helps. Oliver wants me to go to a doctor like last time but we’ve only got the one car and the university can’t really give him time off this time of year, so…” Elio shrugs again.

“I can take you?” Marzia offers but Elio declines.

“No, it’s alright. We’ll find a time soon enough – and if we don’t I’ll just kill myself,” Elio jokes, his voice lighter than it’s been throughout the whole conversation.

“Please Elio, don’t joke about that; it makes me worry,” Marzia says with her eyebrows drawn, and Elio becomes serious again.

“Sorry, gallows humour…” he smiles wryly before turning serious, suddenly confessing. “Honestly when I get like this I don’t really want help. I’m just tired. I only got help last time because it got more tiring to keep going than to stop… I don’t want to go to the doctor or take pills or stop smoking again or stop drinking again, I just want to stop feeling like this so I don’t want or need to do those things. I don’t want to have to _do_ anything to make it happen.”

 _If he’s looking for a pity-party he’s not going to get one,_ Marzia thinks.

“Well you can’t have that, Elio,” she snaps, her voice sharp. Annella looks up at her tone, as surprised as Elio is. “You can either get worse doing nothing or you can put in the effort to try to get better. You’ve always wallowed far too much, and you can afford to do that when you’re fine but you can’t afford to do it right now.”

At first Elio is a little shocked, raising his eyebrows, but Marzia has a twelve year old at home and the authority necessary to raise a child sits well with her.

“I suppose you’re right,” he concedes, used to more gentle words and dazed at not receiving them. Shocked out of something, if only for a moment.

“Yes, I am,” she agrees, holding his gaze for a moment more. He feels like a chastised child. Marzia has never seen how bad he can get so she’s not afraid to send him into a tailspin with a harsh word, and in that moment at least he appreciates it – he needed Oliver’s tenderness last time, but perhaps this is the way forward this time?

Marzia sighs and stands, tipping out Elio’s wine on the grass and putting the stopper back in the bottle. 

“I have to go back to work,” she says. “Don’t drink anything more today. It’s only so many hours until Oliver gets home, so read, smoke, cook, clean – I don’t care what you do, but you be sober, and you be ready to tell Oliver that you need that appointment as soon as possible when he gets here.”

Elio sits there grasping for words with his mouth gaping like a fish for a moment, and then she’s gone. 

And Elio actually believes what she’s said. 

It’s like she’s given him a push and his head is above the water for a moment, and he can see that he’s being stupid. He’s only hurting himself and it’s time to stop fucking wallowing. The voice in his head is suddenly Marzia’s, reproving.

In that moment he feels spurred, like he can do anything. 

So he cleans up the table and helps his mother to the room with the piano, leading her to the couch with a children’s book that she usually likes to keep her occupied. He takes a moment to change his shirt, wash his face and shave, preparing himself to begin taking on the massive job of cleaning out his parents’ things. 

He starts with the records, bringing boxes of old vinyl down into the room where Annella is, and sifting through old symphony recordings, for the ones to keep, the rare ones they’ll sell, and the duds.

It’s mid-afternoon by the time he gets to the non-instrumental records. The first one that catches his attention is a Terry Jacks single. He remembers this, his father used to listen to it all the time was he was a child – probably only five, maybe six. 

He can’t quite remember exactly how it goes so he places it on the record player and stands in front of it, watching it spin several times before the song plays. 

_Maybe it will help me feel connected to him, and it’ll… I don’t know, help me through catharsis or something._

But the second he hears the first notes he knows it was a mistake. He remembers this song. He remembers it because it broke his heart every time he heard it, even as a child, but he’s frozen, unable to turn it off. He just stares, not helped by the generous glasses of wine he’s already imbibed today. 

It’s after the first chorus that he has to lean on the shelf for support as the tears come, catching him off guard as his energised mood comes crashing down around him. The difference is amazing.

_“Goodbye Papa, it's hard to die  
When all the birds are singing in the sky  
Now that the spring is in the air  
Little children everywhere  
When you see them, I'll be there…”_

The desire to self-destruct sneaks up on him, like the killer in a slasher movie.

 _Behind you! Behind you!_ , a hysterical part of his mind cackles before becoming more ominous; _…it’s all behind you._

There’s been no real warning of a desire _this_ strong even with the crying jags but even as he laughs at his own bad joke he just wants to fucking disappear. He wants to be dead all the time but right now he wants to fucking _die_ , he’s not meant to _be_ here. He wants to slip into the ground, he wants never to have existed in the first place to feel this way, he wants to correct this cosmic mistake, he wants to— fuck.

_“…We had joy, we had fun  
We had seasons in the sun  
But the wine and the song  
Like the seasons have all gone”_

God, it makes him want to join Samuel Perlman. _We're all supposed to be together and we're not._ It feels like a song you listen to while you die, it sounds like the song that plays in the next room when a body is found swinging from a beam… There’s a block in his mind, like tunnel-vision – there is nothing outside this house. There is no time beyond today, this is the end. 

_It would be appropriate to die here, in the crumbling remains of where my life used to be… someone can turn it into a hotel and pave over all the things that won’t matter to anyone anymore once I’ve gone._

He’s barely even been able to think about how much he misses his father with the horror of caring for his mother and dealing with himself, but _god_ does he want to join him in that moment. He just wants to die, he wants to fucking _die_ but he _can’t_ but Oliver won’t be home for _hours_ …

All of those old fantasies of how he could die shoot, resurrected, through his mind before he can stop them – drunk on the floor, hanging from a rope, bullet to the brain, wrists in the bath, head in the oven, falling fallingfallingfalling—

It doesn’t even occur to him to turn the song off.

_What did I do the night I wrote that note? I just got more drunk. Maybe I won’t want to do anything stupid if I just drink._

He runs to the kitchen for that whisky bottle and calls Oliver as he drinks. He won’t do anything if he’s drunk he won’t, he won’t do anything if he drinks. It rings and rings and rings but Oliver doesn’t pick up so he leaves a gasping message. 

“Please come home as soon as you can. Please, _please_ come home I _need_ you. Oh god, I just wanna fucking—” he groans, cutting himself off before he can say ‘die’ and taking another sip. “Please just come home, I wish you were here right now, I love you, I need you, come home,” he whimpers into the phone wetly.

He whispers, "I love you so much," just in case, and hangs up.

Distantly he’s aware that he’s panicking but it feels quite far away from him as he tries to escape his thoughts – he’d crawl out of his skin if he could. He needs something, anything to distract himself, so he takes the bottle with him and starts playing any song he can think of on the piano so his mind has to focus on that the way it did when he was reading to his mother. 

He’s forgotten all about Annella, but when he doesn’t respond to her calls she just returns to her book.

He gives up in his task as he slowly calms down into the soothing meditation of playing and then just becomes intoxicated. It’s like he’s been reset as his mind comes back down, weighted by the heaviness of the alcohol.

He’s playing little bits here and there from old songs he half remembers, giving a quiet, drunken cheer at one point, when he realises that his plan has worked… Before the thought sours in the face of his retreated panic and he seems to come back to earth.

_Why can I not stop myself? How did that… attack, even happen? It doesn’t even feel like it’s me making the choice, it doesn’t feel like I have the option to slow down and think, it’s such a compulsion… Why am I so weak?_

_I’m wallowing. Marzia told me I wallow too much. And now I’m wallowing about the fact that I’m fucking wallowing, fuck…_

He’s lost in his thoughts, sitting at the piano, until Annella tries to get his attention again. This time he’s in a place to hear her.

“What time is it Elio?” she asks, and his head immediately whips around at being recognised and having his name remembered. He checks his phone mechanically.

“It’s three.”

Annella tilts her head at the sight of her son’s face and beckons him over. Elio replaces his phone on the piano and follows his mother’s direction, unable to keep himself from stumbling on the way over, almost tripping over the piano stool. Annella frowns, sad.

“Are you drunk, Elio?”

Elio says nothing, just nods as he sits down next to his mother, cuddling up like a child once more, clinging to this moment of lucidity. It’s familiar but strange to Annella, to feel her son’s more solid shoulders beneath her hands, the stronger build that comes with time.

“Elio, how much time has passed?” she asks. “You look older...” 

Annella runs her soft fingers over the lines around Elio’s eyes and on his forehead, and he leans into the touch. 

“What do you remember?” he asks, used to the questions by now, used to helping his mother navigate her own past. 

“You and Oliver just left for Rome, to teach. You were feeling so much better...”

“It’s been about twenty years since then,” he says, finding that he has to work to make his words come out properly, but that he can with focus.

Annella takes it in her stride, more concerned about her son than the missing years of her life. The moment is so surreal, like he’s in a dream talking to the mother he used to have.

“Why are you drinking again, _tesoro?_ Surely Oliver wouldn't let you start up again...” Her voice is sad and sympathetic, running a hand through his hair. “Are you drinking because Oliver has left, or has Oliver left because of your drinking?”

“Neither _maman,”_ Elio sniffs, upset at her caring, and the thought of Oliver gone.

Annella frowns, her calm demeanour disappearing for a moment. 

“You never truly stopped,” she states and Elio’s heart breaks at the thought of his mother waking up after twenty years to discover her only son has wasted his life on alcohol. He’s only wasting it now because it feels like there’s nothing else to do that could possibly help him keep it together right now.

“That’s not it either _maman_. I’m still with Oliver and I haven’t had problems with alcohol since your last memories, I swear,” he pleads, desperate for her to believe him. “I’ve been happy in my life.”

Annella is glad that her son is only having a hard time again now but she doesn’t have time to be happy for his happiness.

“Then why are you drinking again, _tesoro?”_

He wants to be honest – and who better to be honest with than with someone who will forget in an hour at most? It’s only that it will still hurt her _now_ to know the truth that makes him hesitate.

“Because I’m depressed again,” he says, slowly and simply, not giving it all away. But she prods further.

“Why are you depressed again darling?”

“Do you want to know, even if it will hurt to find out?”

“Yes, always Elio. I always want to know why if you’re hurting... What’s hurting you?”

This time, he does explain his tears to his mother.

“ _Papa_ is gone. And he used to take care of you. So now Oliver and I live here and I was taking care of you, but you’re not really here most of the time and neither is anyone else with him at work and I just felt so lonely and _tired_ and _sad_ that I started drinking a little just to help get through the days… We’ve got someone in to help most days now but I’m still so… down, that it’s hard to stay away from it. Sometimes it’s okay when Oliver comes home, but it just doesn’t feel like I’m ever going to stop feeling like this when he’s not here. It feels like everything is crumbling around me.

“Marzia came by today and called me out and told me to stop being stupid, and I felt like there was finally some life in me after what she said, so I started going through dad’s old records to clean out and I listened to one that he used to play when I was little and I just…” Elio suddenly lets out a strange, choked sob as he remembers. “It was so sad and it hit me that I just wanted to die. I wanted to be with _papa_ more than anything in the world. I felt so strongly that I truly wanted to die for the first time in so long, I just panicked and started drinking because I figured I probably wouldn’t do anything if I was busy drinking.” 

Elio feels bad, crying to his mother about problems she’s inadvertently contributed to, but he just can’t help it and again; she will forget. He doesn’t try to hold it together as he cries, staining her soft clothes with his tears.

“Oh Elly, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, kissing his hair, stroking the little bit of grey showing at his temples. “I miss your father all the time, I think… It’s okay to want him back with you, but you’re not ready to go to him yet.”

They both take a moment for him to cry and for her to accept that her husband is gone – she’s heartbroken, but part of her understands in the back of her mind that she will forget soon, and her son needs her now. She knows she only has so much time to help.

“How long has it…?” she asks when his crying has slowed to a trickle. 

“It’s just starting up again,” he mumbles. 

“Does it have to be ‘starting up again’?” she asks. “Surely if it’s just starting now it’s easier to stop now.”

“It would be easier now than later,” Elio concedes, exhausted.

“Please, _tesoro,”_ she implores, holding her son’s face in her hands and looking into his shining eyes. “Please don’t let this be like it was, I couldn’t bear it. You’ll never know what it was like to see you coming out of that airport. To smell the alcohol on you, to hold you and feel like you might break you were so thin, because you just didn’t care... to see your head lolling over Oliver’s shoulder as he carried you to bed because you were too tired and drunk to make it by yourself or bother holding your own head up...” 

Despite how long it’s been Elio still feels crushing guilt at his mother’s words as she closes her eyes, pained at the memory. He knew it must have been bad but everyone always held it together around him for his sake... he knows he can’t do that to Oliver again, and that he has a chance to stop it in its tracks, but the temptation to take the easy way out is so strong in each individual little moment... it never feels serious to just have one drink and then another – most of the time it’s only once it accumulates that he realises what he’s done.

Annella can see the war on her son’s face.

“Please, Elio,” she begs, stealing his attention back. “I’d rather die than see you like that again. I would rather die.”

Elio starts crying afresh at the mention of his mother’s death, hiding his face again. 

“Will you talk to Oliver?” Annella asks eventually, afraid that her time to fix this is running out. 

“I’ve already talked to him. We’re supposed to be going to the doctor but I have no way to get there until he can get time off work.”

“Find a way, Elio, it’s not worth this,” she insists. “You can’t be complacent about this or it will just get worse.”

Elio nods but Annella is unconvinced.

“Do you promise you’ll tell him that you wanted to die today? That you were scared you would do something?” Annella knows she doesn’t have the time to fix this herself, only the time to pass it off to someone more able, and there’s no one she trusts with Elio more than Oliver

At that Elio looks away, ashamed. “I left him a pretty scary voicemail, I don’t think there’s any way around it now…”

They sit in silence for a few more moments before Annella has an idea.

“Will you get me a pen and a piece of paper, darling?”

Elio looks confused but stands up unsteadily and does as she asks, not missing her badly hidden expression of sadness at the state of him, before passing her the items and laying with his head on her lap again as she writes. She does her best to make her words mean something in the short time she has left.

When she’s done Annella shakes her son’s shoulder and instructs, “Put that in your pocket, read it when I’m… different, again. Look at it whenever you feel like you did today, please? Read it whenever you need it.”

There are tears in both of their eyes as Elio nods and does as asked. Annella gestures for her son to sit up and hug her properly, and they sit there for a time just enjoying the warmth and closeness.

“Look at the two of us,” she laughs wetly, freeing one arm to wipe her face and look down at Elio who cannot bear to look at her. “No time for tears though...” she says. “Probably not long now, hm?”

Elio shakes his head as though in denial, still crying, but Annella becomes very calm, knowing she can’t keep her mind here any more than she can stop summer from passing into autumn and winter. 

“Oh my handsome boy,” she sighs, closing her eyes and leaning her chin on her son’s head, content. 

They’re both asleep on the couch by the time Oliver gets home an hour later in an absolute panic. Elio’s terrifying voicemail followed by his phone ringing out every time over the last hour has had Oliver imagining the worst the whole drive home. Elio must have a hundred missed calls, but his phone sits useless on the piano when Oliver rushes in breathlessly. 

The sight of Elio on the couch and not in all the other places he’s been imagining finding him sends Oliver’s heart soaring. Until it occurs to him that it doesn’t really mean anything until he’s got Elio conscious and talking.

He strides over and shakes his husband, heedless of how hard.

“Elio,” he says firmly. 

He doesn’t startle but wakes up confused, and it makes sense – Oliver can smell the whisky on him immediately. 

_Fuck, but at least it’s not as bad as I feared,_ he thinks. _He’s not in immediate danger._

“Oliver?” Elio says, removing his arms from his mother who is slowly stirring, herself. “What time is it? What are you doing home?” he asks, seeing that it’s still light out.

Oliver just sags to sit on the floor in front of the couch, placing his head in his hands as the crushing relief that shoots through him buckles his knees. He knows when Elio realises why he’s home when he gasps.

“Oh my god.”

Oliver just nods, not looking up. 

“You cannot fucking do that to me, ” he moans, before becoming angry. “I thought I was going to lose my _mind_ on the way here, why didn’t you answer your _fucking phone?”_

Elio looks appropriately chastised, answering quietly like a child too afraid of his mother’s wrath not to answer truthfully.

“I must have left it on the piano.” He points. “We fell asleep.”

Oliver follows his gaze.

Elio says, “I’m so sorry,” but Oliver just brushes it aside.

“What happened?” he sighs. 

“Something happened?” Annella asks, her speech dreamy. She’s gone again.

“Nothing, Annella,” Oliver replies, not understanding the look of heartbreak on Elio’s face at her words – he doesn’t know that she was back for a moment. He doesn’t understand the horrible fall to earth it is for Elio.

Oliver decides that he needs to get Elio alone before they can continue. He coaxes Annella up off the couch and helps her to the kitchen table. He answers her questions and gives her a selection of magazines and books of varying reading levels to look through while they talk, explaining that he’ll be back in a moment – he doesn’t have time to figure out where she’s at cognitively but she always enjoys reading.

When he comes back Elio is sitting with his feet planted on the floor, hunched over with two hands on the side of his head; the picture of a man in torment. 

“Come on,” Oliver says, calmer now that his mind has stopped its panic. It’s time to deal with the fallout. Elio takes his offered hand and trails behind him to the outside dining table, ashamed in ways he hasn’t been in years. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says again once they’ve sat down next to one another, genuinely and with his eyes closed, before meeting Oliver’s gaze.

“How drunk are you?” Oliver asks, barrelling past the apology knowing he can’t just tell Elio he forgives him. 

Elio shrugs uncertainly. “I don’t know, I wasn’t measuring. I don’t _feel_ that drunk.”

Oliver nods, not giving any ground but not willing to be harsh either, as usual. He just wants to know what he’s dealing with. 

“Tell me what happened today.”

Elio nods, holds his eyes, and then moves his hand, silently asking Oliver to hold it on the table. It’s an emotional gesture which Oliver accepts, but he speaks factually.

“Marzia came over for lunch,” he begins. “Things… came out, and she basically told me I was being stupid and that I needed to be an adult and make sure I got the help I needed before it became something worse. And the way she said it made me feel… like I wasn’t drowning, for a moment. So I decided I was going to start going through my parents’ things to sort out what to keep and what not while I waited for you to get home to talk about it, and I started with the records and—” he takes a deep breath.

“I found a song _papa_ used to listen to when I was little and I played it and I just… I don’t know what came over me.” He sounds horrified at his own feelings. “It was like a switch flipped... I just wanted to die – I always want to be gone a little bit, but I wanted to _do_ something about it. It made me feel so close to my dad and I realised that I hadn’t really thought about him properly with everything going on, and I just wanted to be with him again and I just… I just wanted to be dead with him, so fucking bad, that all I could think was that if I was drinking, I wouldn’t do anything before you got home.”

Oliver’s anger fades to background noise at that last part – Elio didn’t want to kill himself because he was drinking, he was drinking because he didn’t want to risk killing himself before Oliver got home.

“I was messing around on the piano to distract myself until you called and then… my mom recognised me. It was so surreal, Oliver. She was herself again, except she could only remember until just after I got sober. I told her everything that’s been going on and she just held me and told me about what it was like seeing me like I was when I came back and made me promise I wouldn’t let it get like that again. She—” 

Elio cuts off, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a piece of paper. He unfolds it slowly and flattens out the creases reverently.

“She wrote me a note and told me to read it when she was gone again, and whenever I felt like I did today…”

_Elio... Your papa and I have loved you so, so much… When you think of us don’t be sad. Just remember that we wanted you to live, and that we never, ever gave up that you would again even in the darkest times. Please, tesoro... Live, for us if not for yourself; we lived for you._

Elio is crying again by the end – god, he’s so sick of crying, but it’s like a message from beyond death.

“Can I read it?” Oliver asks gently. Elio just nods and hands it over, trying to get it together.

He knows when Oliver is done because he pulls him into a hard embrace. 

“I hate that I’ve been acting like this; feeling like this… I feel so regressed,” Elio says, trying to keep his tears inside, but only managing to slow them. “I feel like a child because I haven’t had to deal with this since I was fucking twenty-four. I don’t know how to stop it, only how to fix it once I’ve already fallen all the way down.”

Oliver doesn’t waver, pulling back and looking into his love’s shiny, red-rimmed eyes.

“Well we’re going to learn how now,” he insists, his tone brooking no argument – from Elio or from the world.

“I’m so sorry,” Elio sniffs, but Oliver just shakes his head and pulls him back into his arms. 

“Don’t be sorry, just… promise me you’ll try – really try – to get better when we go to the doctor. Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good, because we’re going tomorrow. I don’t care what the university says.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, our boys aren't going to let something like that happen again, they're going to fight it now because they know better :') (And also because it's risker with Oliver being away so much this time around)
> 
> The Terry Jacks song is [Seasons in the Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPcc1ftj8E) \- it's a song my dad used to play in the car because we had this seventies CD with a lot of great stuff on it... I hope you like it :) I personally find it really hard to listen to because like I said, it sounds like a song you listen to as you die or that continues to play when you've already died like End of the World in Girl, Interrupted or So Long Marianne or something :(
> 
> Anyways! Please leave me comments for I live on them 😄♥️


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly this is probably the chapter I'm the most uncertain about posting on any story I've done, but it's been giving me such grief I've just got to post it and move forward to the therapy and the rocky path to Elio getting better. 
> 
> (I said probably only one chapter more last chapter but it's looking like there'll be a few more with the way this went)
> 
> I wrote two different versions of this and I spent ages tying myself in mental knots trying to write the other version and then my friend said he preferred this version so here we go please be kind :)

Elio is surprised how different it is when he goes to the doctor this time around. He feels so much more vulnerable than apathetic, not like last time. 

He wakes up tired as usual. His grief and fear from yesterday are gone – he just wants to do nothing. He doesn’t want to move at all, but Oliver pulls him out of bed, herds him into the shower, and makes him get dressed. He doesn’t make any decisions - his path is chosen for him, his clothes are chosen for him, his food is chosen for him... he’s grateful not to have to take part in the world more than he needs to. His mind is not really there. 

The long drive to the doctor is silent but for the radio; Elio isn’t angry at Oliver for making him get up or leave the house, he just doesn’t have anything to say. He doesn’t have anything to communicate to the world. His mind churns slowly but he can’t quite get a grip on what exactly it is he’s thinking at any particular moment, so he just closes his eyes and waits, listening to the sound of the rain as it begins to fall gently on the roof.

They get him to fill out a questionnaire when he arrives, and all the while all he can think is what his answers would have been like twenty years ago… _Things can’t really be that bad then,_ he thinks, feeling disconnected from the incident yesterday. _This is stupid._

He’s been tired all morning but it turns into something else as he sits down in the waiting room. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to deal with this. It’s cold in this room, it’s impersonal. He wants to be home so he can burrow into his warm familiar bed and sleep, and that’s all he wants. He just wants to be curled up safe in his bed until he’s gone – why is that so terrible to everyone? 

_When someone is going to die in a hospital they can sign a Do Not Resuscitate form… why can’t I do that and just wait?_

Maybe it’s the cold that’s making him feel this so strongly. It’s warm at home. Maybe it’s that he hasn’t been so far away from the house in months; he feels much too far from home all of a sudden… He frowns a little at the thought as the doctor calls his name and he stands. 

This time Oliver does go in with him, holding his hand. Elio feels stranger still as he enters the room. It feels odd to be going to the doctor before his life has been _indisputably_ driven into the ground. He feels tired and he knows he’s depressed but he still feels far away from who he was in his panic yesterday or his apologies after as he sits down in the office.

The doctor doesn’t read his answers before she speaks to him, just gestures for him to begin explaining. Elio looks to Oliver pleadingly. He’s been silent all morning, his mouth feels glued shut; he doesn’t want to talk about anything. Oliver nods. 

“Is it alright if I explain the basics and then Elio can take over?” he asks, and the doctor nods, not seeming enthusiastic about the idea but accepting that judging by Elio’s presentation it’ll have to do.

Elio just clings to Oliver’s arm, leaning into him as he explains Sami’s death, Annella’s illness, the solitude and following depression, and subsequent falling back into old behaviours with alcohol. As Oliver describes what happened earlier with the dream and what happened yesterday with the song, Elio hides his face a little, not seeing the doctor’s subtle studying of his body language.

Elio is grateful when Oliver mentions that he wasn’t the one who decided he should be here, hoping that it explains his reticence to the doctor so she won’t ask him about it – he doesn’t want to answer more questions than he absolutely has to. 

Even just the first one exhausts him.

“How many times have you felt actively suicidal like you did yesterday, Elio?” she asks.

His skin crawls a little at her using his first name. _She doesn’t know me,_ he thinks, _why is she pretending?_

“A lot of times…” he murmurs, hating opening his mouth. He takes a breath. “…the first time. This time only once, so far.”

The doctor nods, checking his answer on the questionnaire and typing some notes on her computer. It feels strangely like she’s trying to prod and pry where she’s not wanted as she types. His mind and his experiences suddenly feel so private... He curls up a little more with his eyes downcast, hunching his shoulders and angling his body towards Oliver.

”And you’d been drinking beforehand?” 

“Two glasses with Marzia,” he murmurs. 

“And how many drinks would you say you have in a day on average?”

Elio feels a wave of muted shame sweep through him. He looks up to Oliver for a moment but he just looks worried at his demeanour, and Elio doesn’t blame him. He knows he’s acting strangely, he just can’t seem to be any different right now. 

“I don’t know,” he finally answers. “There’s no average. Some days none. Others ten, or more.”

She just nods again, the clacking of her typing too cutting in the silence for Elio. He leans into Oliver, who pulls an arm around him, frowning. 

Oliver has never seen Elio like this. He’s not himself, and he’s not exactly apathetic, and he’s not sobbing. He’s just… it’s like he just doesn’t want to interact with any part of the world, anything outside of himself… Like he wants to hide. It makes Oliver want to bundle him up and take him home until he feels better, but he knows that an appointment like this is the only way he’s going to start feeling better. 

Trying to help, Oliver removes his arm and gently nudges Elio back towards the doctor when her typing finishes… but at the removal of the warmth, Elio just feels abandoned and cold, not encouraged. He pulls his arms close to himself. 

“How many more questions before I can go?” he asks, knowing he sounds like a child but not thinking enough to care. He just wants to go home. “Last time I just told the her what had happened and she gave me a prescription and we went home.”

The doctor nods, trying to look understanding, but Elio just feels condescended to as she speaks.

“Things are a bit different now,” she explains slowly, with a tone that feels patronising to her patient. “I don’t think you need an antidepressant, necessarily. At least not before we try all of our other options. I think at this point you would benefit much more from talking to someone qualified, in the mental health sphere.”

The words ring sour and false to Elio. Pills he can do if it makes Oliver happy, but he doesn’t see how he’s going to talk his way out of this hole.

It doesn’t feel like an illness, it doesn’t feel like a ‘mental health’ problem. The problem is that his parents are dead, or dying, and any time in his life that mattered is over and no one will let him sleep the rest of it away. It feels truthful and emotional, not medical. It all feels so much more personal than this doctor in her cold, impersonal office could ever understand.

Elio breathes in, breathes out, folds his hands, rubs his fingers to try to get some warmth back, blinks, sighs… 

Oliver’s not going to support him leaving early. He’s on his own and he feels like he has neither the energy to get through this nor the energy to convince them to let him just go. He shakes his head, allowing his hair to give him a little more privacy though he knows it’s doing nothing. If anything it’s just sharing more of his secrets to do it.

After a few moments Oliver nudges his shoulder.

“You promised you would try,” he implores, frowning a little. 

Elio sighs, and tries to regroup for Oliver. He nods for the doctor to continue.

She asks him about all kinds of things – his sleeping habits, his social contact, his smoking, his diet and exercise… he frowns a little at the diet question, wondering why it is he can force himself to make a meal for himself and his mother, but the thought of going through the motions of eating it is just… too much, most of the time. He just grazes his plate until it’s cold and he’s finished his wine, so he can stop pretending to enjoy it.

But he doesn’t say that, just answers exactly what she asked, short and mumbled.

He doesn’t like her eyes on him – it’s like she’s reading things in his body that he doesn’t mean to give away, things that are private from people who aren’t trained to understand like she is. 

He doesn’t feel like he’s ever answered so many questions in his life, though in reality the whole thing only takes about twenty minutes. Despite Oliver’s presence he’s felt so much more vulnerable this time… today, for some reason, there was no apathy to protect him.

By the time they’re back in the car he’s got a referral for a psychologist in town and recommended lifestyle changes, and no prescription. 

“I didn’t like her,” Elio says from the passenger seat as soon as they close the doors. He feels a little better to be out of the cold air-conditioning and away from the doctor’s eyes, but he still feels like he needs to be small, and cocooned, and _home._ He just wants to melt into his bed and disappear from the world quietly… Why is that not allowed?

“You didn’t like answering her questions,” Oliver corrects as he reverses, pulling Elio out of his thoughts with his shortness.

Elio frowns, looking down at his fiddling hands.

“I didn’t like the way she looked at me,” he says, finally feeling like saying more than two words in a row. “I didn’t like any of it. I didn’t like how impersonal it felt. It felt like she was probing when I didn’t want to share… It was so cold in there and the lights were so bright—”

“Can you do up your seat belt, please?”

Elio just sighs and does as Oliver asks. He knew he probably wasn’t going to get as much sympathy this time around after what he pulled yesterday, but Oliver seems like he’s truly unhappy with him in that moment, working his jaw.

Elio wants to know why but he feels his mouth sealing shut again, his eyes becoming heavy, like a building going into some kind of lockdown… After the questioning the quiet makes him feel safe again, so he wraps his arms around himself and closes his eyes, and tries not to think about anything at all, just letting the sound of the light rain lull him.

But he gets only a few minutes of quiet, dark, stillness before Oliver speaks in a choked voice.

“You said you were going to try… You _promised.”_

Elio opens his eyes a crack at the words, which sound like a confession… The light is blinding but he persists, blinking back into the day. Oliver’s eyes remain steadfastly on the road, but his expression is pinched. 

“…I _was_ trying,” Elio replies, a little heartbroken at his words. “I…” he trails off.

He can understand how it may not have seemed that way… But it still feels hopeless, to hear that the most effort he could put in today was not enough. He got out of bed, he got in the car, he showed up at the doctor’s office on time… he did all the right steps, why wasn’t it enough this time?

“I swear I was trying Oliver,” he insists miserably, forcing himself to emerge from his shell at the thought of Oliver being on the other side of it. “You have to believe me, I was trying, but I…" He takes a breath. "I felt strange. It was so cold and I felt so exposed, when I needed to be tucked away, and home, and safe, and hiding, and—” Elio presses his hands into his eyes, needing the dark, quiet moment to think as he gets his breathing under control. 

Eventually he says, “It’s different this time. Sometimes I feel nothing much, like I used to but sometimes I feel like my world is coming to an end. It never felt like that before. I wanted it to end, but the end didn’t feel like it was coming for me… I never felt like I was sitting on the edge of time, or on the shore of nothingness just waiting to dip my toe in. I feel so detached from the world… I don’t feel like there’s anything to anchor me most days.”

Oliver frowns. Elio talked about the numbness, the consuming nature of his depression the first time. But he was always pragmatic about it, he never talked like this, like there was… some kind of fateful doom on the horizon. 

“Have you considered that it might be because you used to go to work and talk to other people and exist in varying scenery?” he asks, frustrated. “And now you’ve stopped talking to all of our friends, you have nothing to occupy you, and you’re in the same house every single day. That’s pretty detaching, Elio.”

“Those are factors,” Elio murmurs, looking back down. “But I think it’s also that you’re not home,” he admits. “…I miss you. The nights are not enough.”

Oliver is silent for a long time, pensive.

“Do you need me to be home?”

He’s offering but it’s clear in his voice that it’s a big ask – maybe it wouldn’t be clear to a stranger but Oliver can’t hide from Elio. On the inside Elio feels like crying, he feels so stuck. He can’t ask Oliver to do that for him, he just can’t.

“No,” he replies tightly, his heart breaking. In that moment it’s so clear to Elio how much he does miss Oliver, even as he sits right next to him. Their time together is so often spent trying to deal with whatever happened in the time Oliver was gone, it doesn’t feel like they get to just enjoy each other’s company right now… 

Elio misses the time so long ago when his problem was out in the open and he would just drink and Oliver would accept that it was what he was going to do until he was ready to stop, and they could still be happy together, watching movies, taking walks, reading to each other…

_Why does he want me to get better before I’m ready this time?_

_Maybe if I hadn’t told anyone I wanted to die he wouldn’t be so worried and I could get bad again and then_ maman _would eventually die and I would get worse and worse and then one day I’d want to stop just like last time. Or I wouldn’t and I’d finally get to die._

Elio is filled with regret in that moment, as he realises that he doesn’t really want to stop. He just wants to sleep and drink and he’s ruined his chance to do that with his panic yesterday.

“What are you thinking?” Oliver asks, cutting through his thoughts.

“Nothing,” Elio lies. 

_This is hiding,_ he thinks. _This is what I should have done, I should have hidden better and I could have continued for months before he caught me. If I hadn’t been honest with Oliver and then Marzia I wouldn’t have been listening to that record to panic in the first place, and then nobody would be poking in where I don’t want them to and I could have spent today in bed where I know I need to be right now or gotten drunk or…_

In that moment it’s like the twenty years between his first depression and this one never passed, his younger self whispering in his ear like a snake, _’it’s finally here, you won’t hurt your family anymore; you can die now... This is how you truly feel, how you’ll always feel again - you_ should _die now’._

The only thing that puts the brakes on that thought is his mother’s words. Elio reaches into his pocket and pulls out the note she wrote.

_Live, for us if not for yourself; we lived for you._

His mind is warring between living for his parents and giving in to his looming un-life when Oliver says, “You weren’t thinking nothing,” in a tone Elio can’t read, glancing at the note in Elio’s hands.

“No, I wasn’t,” Elio admits, but he doesn’t elaborate.

Oliver hesitates for a moment before asking, “…What were you thinking?”

Elio doesn’t tell him the truth. His mother is in his head insisting he can’t just waste his life and drink until he quietly dies, but he also can’t take that option away from himself. He needs to decide, just later, later, later…

“I just need to be home right now,” he replies, stuck between his two impulses.

  
Stuck is a good word for how he feels in general in the time between his doctor’s appointment and the earliest therapist’s appointment Oliver could get him, in a week and a half. The caretaker is in for the full five days this week after Oliver explains and offers a considerable raise.

Oliver insists Elio messages his friends, and he does with his husband watching on, but as they reply later in the evening all he can think is that they’re conversations he doesn’t have the energy for, and once he opens them they’ll know he’s seen them and he’ll have to reply, so he just puts it off. Hour by hour, day by day. Not now, not now, laterlaterlater…

He once decides that he should probably put in some effort for Oliver and try to eat something, but when he finally makes it out of bed to go to the fridge he finds nothing that appeals to him. So he goes back to bed, sits with his eyes closed for a few minutes, and tries again. Still nothing. Back to bed. He ends up only ever eating when Oliver wakes him up and when he gets home, and even then it’s a huge struggle, but at least he’s not drinking.

He finds that when he burrows beneath his blankets and tries not to think about anything, not to interact with anything, not to be anyone… he can not drink and it’s fine. It’s felt strange to open his mouth, to let anything at all in, since the morning of the appointment… He doesn’t smoke or even breathe through his mouth anymore because it feels like too much in his mouth, in his lungs… But he’s not drinking, so Oliver is satisfied with that even though Elio answers in short, mumbled sentences whenever they speak.

He thinks this is probably worse than before, but it feels better to live through so he doesn’t say anything about it. He doesn’t say anything much at all. He has nothing to share – he doesn’t want anything and he doesn’t have anything to give… He feels like his brain is sluggish, slowing down, like parts of it have gone to sleep… It doesn’t feel like he exists, a lot of the time.

One night, a few days before the appointment, Oliver coaxes him down to the lounge to watch a movie – well, to play a movie Elio closes his eyes to ignore. He’s curled up with his duvet, sitting with his legs over Oliver’s lap and his head on his chest with a warm arm around him, when Oliver asks him a question.

“Why won’t you really talk to me since the doctor’s appointment?”

He sounds forlorn as Elio feels the question rumble through the chest under his cheek. But in Elio’s mind, if he buries his face and hides, maybe it will all just go away. He doesn’t want to interact with the world – if only Oliver could just come inside his brain and understand that way. 

There’s a strange noise in the back of his throat as he shakes his head, his eyes still heavy and closed… usually he’ll respond to Oliver’s talking in one way or another, but tonight in particular he just feels…

He just can’t.

“Is it because you’re drunk and you don’t want to give it away?” Oliver hazards, his voice sympathetic like he’s trying to convince Elio he’ll be kind to him even if that’s the case, as long as he tells the truth now.

Elio shakes his head. Oliver sighs, frustrated and a little scared.

“Elio, please just say something to me,” he begs, his voice small and frightened. 

Elio takes a deeper breath than he has all week and prepares himself for a moment before he speaks, mumbled and barely audible.

“I feel like I’m slipping away.”

His tongue feels like lead. He feels like he’s given something up to speak, like there’s a ripple in his calm lake now. He doesn’t notice Oliver’s reaction as his brain moves; slowly, but more than it has all day.

_I feel like I’m disappearing. I feel like a ghost. I feel like I’m already dead. And in a way it feels good. I like it. It lets me not think… I don’t really want to get rid of it anymore. It’s like I’ve gotten what I wanted – I’ve had my cake and eaten it too. I’m alive enough for Oliver and my parents, and dead enough for me… Maybe I should just become a monk somewhere and meditate until I die like some of them do…_

Outside of Elio’s consuming thoughts Oliver is staring down at his love, trying to figure out how he’s supposed to respond to such an ominous statement. What can he possibly do to help beyond what he has? The appointment with the therapist isn’t far away, what can he do until then?

“How can I help you stop feeling that way?” he asks, grasping for anything.

Elio just shakes his head. _Nothing._

“You can’t,” he murmurs with what feels like a huge effort. “Want to.”

Oliver hears Elio’s words, how sick he sounds, how far away… 

He can’t deal with this right now. It scares him too much.

He removes his arm from around Elio and pushes his legs off of his lap, standing and going to take a long shower. In that moment he wants to forget and escape, as much as Elio does.

Elio feels something for a moment as he walks away, worrying that he shouldn’t have told Oliver that… but then he feels the softness of the sofa beneath him and the warmth of his blanket, and it slips from his mind. He doesn’t have to deal with that if he just curls up here, and is very warm, and quiet, and still…

_Slipping away, slipping away, I’m slipping away…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes - I promise after this it'll be more of a patchwork of good and bad days, rather than just bad ones :)
> 
> As usual, comments are life and without them I perish :'))))


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty, here we are guys :) I lied apparently because this is largely another flavour of pain, BUT there's recovery and a happy ending :'))) Well, you know, as happy as it can be.
> 
> I know this is a bit short, but I really needed to just finish this one so I can move on to something happier and fluffier 💀

The morning of the appointment, Elio wakes up to Oliver running a hand through his hair, murmuring, “Hey,” with a small, gentle smile. 

With that he finds the energy to lift his head, nuzzling into Oliver’s palm. It’s more than everything he’s volunteered willingly in the last week combined.

Oliver comes into the shower with him with time to spare, rather than just herding him in quickly. He soaps him up and washes him down, running his hands up and down his spine, pressing soft, intentioned kisses into his neck… for a moment Elio finds he can feel something, his skin charged with an electric current under Oliver’s gentle, experienced hands that know his body so well.

Oliver smiles as Elio shivers under his fingers – he can’t just wait, until he’s ready to get better, but he wants to help his Elio by _love_ like so long ago, not by miserable insistence.

They’re almost late as a result but they couldn’t care less. It has Elio in the best possible frame of mind to face this situation he doesn’t want to face – it has him actually reacting to the world for the first time since the day of the doctor’s appointment. 

He almost feels like himself again for a moment as Oliver kisses him in the waiting room before he goes in. 

He doesn’t really like the therapist honestly... he doesn’t really want to be there, he doesn’t really want to start going against the grain yet. 

He doesn’t want to answer private questions or put any effort in yet. 

Last time it was those who knew him best that helped him heal, so he didn’t need to answer questions or ensure he was understood… He doesn’t like this new process but it’s what Oliver wants so he'll at least attend to make him happy.

The man – “call me Sandro” – asks Elio about why he’s there, his past with depression and therapy, his relationship with suicide; ‘my husband booked the appointment and drove me here, years of depression but no therapy ‘til now, something of a love/hate relationship…’

The last question he asks throws Elio for a loop.

“What do you want to get out of this?”

Elio pauses for a moment, frowning as he thinks.

“I don’t want anything out of this,” he says honestly, which Sandro says he appreciates. 

If Oliver hadn’t been so tender and loving throughout the morning he would have just left it at ‘I don’t want anything’. 

When he’s finished he feels strange. Sandro got him to talk about so many things and with his elevated mood going in he was okay to answer, but god knows what he’s going to want tomorrow.

_It’s so much more unstable this time; I never know how I’m going to feel in a day, in an hour, in a minute… I just want to flatten it all out._

He’s grateful when he emerges from the building that Oliver doesn’t immediately ask him about how it went. Oliver can see the conflicted, confused expression on Elio’s face and leaves it be.

_He’ll tell me when he’s ready to._

Rather than go back to the home immediately they spend an hour or so in the local bookshop, looking for something interesting. Oliver is so affectionate and Elio finds himself drawn to it again, unable to focus on his search with Oliver’s hand absentmindedly kneading his shoulder, his fingers brushing the little hairs at the back of his neck, his body so warm and so close…

He shivers, unused to feeling much of anything, let alone this… He finds himself starting to get hard for the second time in weeks – possibly months, now – at the thought of another round like in the shower in the morning. He knows his eyes are dark and heated when he looks up at Oliver and tells him to just _pick something_ so they can go home.

It’s quick and explosive, both of them still pent up and eager despite their morning activities, after spending so long just trying to get through the day. Elio lies on the bed gasping, feeling like his whole body is alight. It’s the polar opposite of how he’s felt all week; he feels so _alive_ when he’s been lying here practicing being dead all week. 

Oliver looks over and smiles at his husband, finally feeling like there’s some progress.

That night Elio is curled up in Oliver’s arms, again not paying attention to the movie. But this time it’s not because he’s trying not to exist, it’s because he’s staring into the corner focusing on the feeling of Oliver’s fingers running up and down his spine. He probably isn’t even doing it consciously but it’s Elio’s whole world in that moment. 

He can’t contain himself any longer and turns suddenly, undoing Oliver’s belt frantically. At first Oliver smiles, laughing a little at his husband’s urgency, but the laughter quickly turns into a moan as Elio takes him into his mouth. 

_He’s alive!_ Oliver’s brain cheers with a victorious laugh when he comes. _We made it, he’s alive!_ he thinks, but he thinks it too soon.

Because as Elio melts into the couch his mind is in overdrive. If he can’t slip out of the world he’s going to take every good, distracting, pleasurable thing it can give him as his consolation prize.

_If I’m dead and I need to be alive just fucking electrocute me like Frankenstein’s goddamn monster._

The wine starts disappearing again, and Elio doesn’t try to hide it when he’s been smoking and drinking. Oliver does his best to make his disapproval known while also maintaining that he is going to help through love, not through irritating prodding. He appreciates Elio’s honesty, at least… He’s still going to therapy, so Oliver waits for it to calm down.

But it doesn’t calm down. Elio will do just about anything to take his mind off of how he’s been feeling, anything to keep the hazy cloud around his thoughts. He wants to be dumb, he doesn’t want to think – _being smart is overrated,_ he thinks as he lies on the carpet chain-smoking and drinking wine straight from the bottle at midday. His thoughts casually wander to what he could use to bash his brains in until he couldn’t think properly, like he thought before.

_Crowbar, hammer, gravity, this bottle maybe…_

He holds it up and laughs a little before becoming entranced by the way the light moves through the glass, twisting it and holding it towards the window’s light. After a few moments he feels himself beginning to come back down to earth and in a second he’s back up again, forcing his mind to think of something, anything other than the looming clouds about to descend if he doesn’t do something about it.

_Nope, nope, can’t have that. Let’s go for a run, time for a run, we’ll run to the Berm and back, and then maybe do it again and it’ll be great, day-drunk running sounds awesome, everything is fine. I’ll get some sun like they say you should and it’ll be awesome and then maybe when I get back I’ll use the toys again, I could go again._

The light, sunburnt flush in Elio’s cheeks when Oliver gets home is a false one, the blush a liar.

One night Oliver comes home to his husband dancing by himself to blaring music in the sitting room, with the caretaker and Annella in the next room ignoring the situation as best they can. He doesn’t think Elio even knows Isadora’s name but she gives Oliver a look that tells him she’s worried about him as she takes Annella to bed. 

Oliver prepares himself to deal with crying and shame but he’s met with a drunken cheer when Elio sees him. He knows he should disapprove when Elio stumbles up laughing to offer him a sip from the bottle but he’s just so relieved to see him moving – to see him _dancing, laughing!_ – that he can’t help but smile, though he knows he should be frowning. He takes a few sips because Elio won’t be dissuaded and joins him in a sweet slow dance, enjoying the closeness through his internal conflict.

He’s torn. He doesn’t know how to deal with this situation. It doesn’t feel right to not say anything about the drinking, but he can’t bring Elio down when he’s up for the first time in months – when he's been down enough that for a week he didn’t even want to drink. 

It feels like he shouldn’t enjoy it when Elio takes him up to the bedroom and undoes his belt, insisting that Oliver, “Let me, just lemme baby, I’ll make you feel so good.” But with the wine and how fast it’s moving and how good Elio looks with his flushed cheeks and his wet lips… Oliver just nods his assent with a helpless moan and comes down his throat with his fingers buried in his love’s hair a few minutes later.

At the end Elio wipes his mouth and gives Oliver a drunken, mischievous smile before pulling himself up to flop onto the bed, passing out almost immediately. Usually Oliver would feel selfish for receiving and not giving, but Elio is probably too drunk to even get hard right now, let alone finish.

Oliver sighs, his conflicted feelings returning as he comes down from the high, fastening his belt with a strange feeling of shame and dirtiness… He’s never felt that with Elio before. 

He frowns as he pours a glass of water downstairs, he frowns as he rouses his love for just long enough to drink it, he frowns as he studies Elio’s blank, sleeping face in the low light as he so often did in New York…

He has no sense of Elio’s progress these last few weeks. 

He’s out of bed and participating in the world again – he’s eating and laughing and having sex again! – but he’s drinking again, and he’s smoking again. 

And he’s moving but he’s exercising himself to exhaustion. He’s interested in sex again but he’s running rings around Oliver before coming back for more. He’s not sleeping all day, but he’s up and distracting himself for hours if he’s not asleep the second his head hits the pillow at night.

It’s like he’s always running away from something and it’s slowly catching up no matter how fast he runs… Oliver reassures himself that Elio is in therapy now, that Sandro can help him better than he can and surely if this wasn’t a part of the process he’d raise the issue… but the feeling that something is horribly wrong and getting worse won’t go away.

The feeling is strengthened every time he comes home to find his husband on the bed moaning as he fucks himself on one of their toys, heedless of whether Isadora is still downstairs. Every time he finds Elio smelling of dry sweat, dehydrated and passed out on the couch from literally running until he physically couldn’t anymore. Every time he looks at their bank statement and sees the charges – upmarket wines, expensive cigarettes, specialty food items ordered in from wherever was necessary for the best…

It’s not like they can’t afford it but he has to say something. Elio’s sexual appetite alone is _exhausting_ Oliver.

“Elio…” he sighs reproachfully one night when he can smell the wine on his love’s lips again. 

Elio just shushes him between kisses, speaking breathlessly.

“I know, I know, but it’s already done, just kiss me. Please, I need you…”

“Elio… just slow down, slow down,” Oliver urges, but he just marches on, trailing a chain of kisses down Oliver’s neck, his hands travelling south as the corners of his mouth twitch up. 

_"Elio!”_ Oliver finally snaps when he feels himself beginning to give in to temptation despite his exhaustion, gripping his husband’s arms and pinning them to his sides. He frowns looking into his love’s eyes. He doesn’t look manic, exactly, but he looks _desperate_ as he pants.

“What?” he asks between breaths, eyes darting between Oliver’s, not seeing the problem.

Oliver is at a loss at first, shaking his head as he searches for words. 

He could already smell cum on Elio when he greeted him, how could he possibly be this desperate to go again? He can’t wait any longer trusting Sandro’s expertise. He knows something isn’t right and he needs to address this before it gets worse.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and it’s clear he doesn’t _mean what are you doing right this second,_ he means _what are you_ doing, _Elio?_ His brow is drawn with worry as all of his concerns come out. 

“I—I was happy you were doing things again and I _am_ happy that you want things again, but… You are _out of control_ lately. Have you _seen_ how much money you’ve spent on wine alone? And cigarettes? That truffle oil you bought was _insanely_ expensive and it’s already gone. You’re drinking, you’re smoking, I can’t keep up with you in bed, _at all_ … You’re literally running yourself to exhaustion – you’re not even sleeping, you’re just passing out, you’re—” 

Oliver stares at him for a moment, trying to get through, choking on air as Elio stares up at him as though not understanding what the problem is.

“I’m just trying to feel better, I thought you’d be happy that I even wanted to do that.” 

Oliver sighs and looks to the side, recalling a thought he had so long ago when Elio began smoking constantly after he quit drinking… _Is he even capable of finding something that makes him feel better without becoming addicted to it, anymore?_

He shakes the thought out of his head.

“I want you to feel better but,” Oliver sighs. “You’re not _getting better,_ you’re just covering the wound. You’re just escaping.”

Elio frowns, pulling back.

“Well excuse me for wanting to escape my fucking depressing life for a moment, Oliver – why ever would I want to do that?” he replies, sarcastic and biting, folding his arms.

Oliver sighs, exasperated but not taking the bait. 

“Are you telling Sandro about all of this?”

Elio raises his eyebrows.

“Telling him that I’m running, eating regularly, getting out of bed? Telling him about what, exactly?”

Oliver scoffs; _Of course he’s only mentioned those parts…_

“About _all_ of it, Elio. About this hyper… hyper-everything,” Oliver replies, not put off. "There's no point going to therapy if you're lying to the therapist."

Elio drops his gaze as something like shame crosses his face for a moment .

“I’m just making myself feel good,” he says dejectedly as his stone wall of denial chips. Oliver gives no ground, pushing on in an attempt to topple it.

“You’re doing these things because you’re running away from how you feel, but your feelings are going to catch up with you eventually. You can’t do this forever, Elio. You can’t escape being alone with your thoughts forever.”

Elio turns away, closing his eyes. He breathes for a moment before his shoulders slump, defeated. 

“Well I fucking can’t _now_ ,” he says, voice wobbling as he suddenly begins to cry, for the first time in weeks. 

Oliver’s frustration immediately drops in the face of the sudden change, turning his love around and pulling him into his arms, where he breaks.

“I’m so fucking unhappy,” Elio cries through his sobs, wet and true. He cries like a child, utterly weak, and without defences, in the face of everything he’s been trying to ignore hitting him again. His father’s death, his mother’s cruel illness, the return of the depression he’s going to have to claw his way back out of for as long as it takes…

He thumps his fists weakly against Oliver’s chest as he curses him for breaking the spell, but Oliver just holds him tighter as misplaced anger gives way to more helpless tears. Elio’s knees are weak and he’s held up only by Oliver’s strong arms around him as he cries into his chest, deep and cathartic. 

“It’s not fair, it’s not fair!” he cries as Oliver strokes his hair, murmuring that he knows it’s not fair. “Why can’t I just feel good? Why is this happening to me?”

“I don’t know,” Oliver soothes, rocking side to side as his love cries himself out, praying that this will finally be the turning point and not another false alarm. 

When the tears have slowed to a trickle and then stopped Oliver pulls back and wipes his love’s cheeks. He kisses his forehead, each of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, his eyelids, his jaw… Elio just lets him, receives this love he’s being given; unconditional, and true. 

If he felt like he could have cried any more then, he would have.

“I can’t keep doing this,” he admits tiredly when they’re lying in bed later that evening. “I need to get better. Actually better.”

“You do,” Oliver murmurs gently in agreement. 

Elio feels like he’s got his head on straight for a moment, feels like he’s finally got a true, clear picture of his situation. He’s tired. He’s done. Death isn’t coming for him and he’s got forty more years ahead of him. 

He’s ready to do the hard part, the hard work. No more escaping, no more easy way out, no more giving in…

He doesn’t say any of that but Oliver can see the thoughts going through his love’s head. 

_It didn’t take years of depression and chronic alcoholism followed by a visit from an old mentor to reach ‘done and laid bare’ this time… I guess there are benefits to being older and more easily exhausted,_ Elio thinks with a knowing huff and tired eyes.

Oliver raises a questioning eyebrow but Elio just shakes his head and closes his eyes, closing the distance between their bodies and waiting for sleep to come.

Elio finally tells Sandro what he’s really been doing and how he’s been feeling. Unstable, unpredictable, so, so unhappy… Sandro suggests Elio should probably be on medication again with this new information, and sends him back to the doctor for her assessment. 

With Elio’s more forthcoming testimony she agrees with Sandro, and he’s got his prescription again.

And all of this is possible because Oliver leaves the university. He apologises profusely but explains that he is no longer able to fill the position, citing ‘medical emergency’ as the cause, which… true enough. 

He stands with Elio as he takes his first antidepressant pill since his twenties. He wakes him up at the same time every morning and holds him in bed every night, comforted by the closeness to his ill husband. 

He holds him through the days when he can barely speak, and brings him the notebook he’s been using on those days to write his feelings down if he can’t say them. On other days they talk a lot, actually, through Elio’s tiredness and unpredictable feelings. They talk about the classics, about world events they read about in the newspaper that morning, about the weather if they’re lying out in the sun in the yard…

Elio has always needed so much support to come back out of this, and finally he has all he could want or need.

Oliver scarcely leaves his side to go to the bathroom… Physical intimacy has always been a balm between them at times like this, and it is now more than ever… It’s still not linear though. Some days he’s up for a light jog and seems like himself again. And then the next day he cries all day and can’t be consoled by a kind word or touch – especially in the first few weeks of the meds. 

When he starts talking through his father’s death and his mother’s illness he feels like he’s back to square one before he starts to feel any better. The pills make him feel sick at first and he loses his appetite for weeks before he can enjoy his food again. At first he feels somehow worse, and forgets for a moment why he wanted to get better in the first place… But now Oliver is there to remind him, to ensure that those days don’t send him off track entirely, to make sure he still takes his meds and gets to his sessions and stays out of bed while the sun is up, even when he doesn’t want to.

Sometimes Oliver will have needed to take care of something and he'll find Elio curled up in their bed where he knows he shouldn't be, but he won't say a word. He'll just wake his love with shake of the shoulder and a kiss, and bring him downstairs to start making dinner or lunch or to play a board game if there's nothing better to do. 

Oliver’s gentle, persistent reminders make all the difference for Elio, and some days he feels he’ll never be able to grovel enough to repay his patience… But he also knows Oliver would never ask him to.

_You deserve to be happy, and you deserve to be helped. You don’t owe it to me to be perfectly receptive to the help I want to give you._

It’s reassuring to think of Oliver’s words after a crying jag or whenever he begins to descend – though Elio supposes he’s lucky, because he doesn’t hate himself this time. It’s easier not to feel bad about Oliver’s kindness this time. He hasn’t had enough time alone with a bottle to ruin his life for long enough to hate himself, so at least there’s that, even in the darkest moments.

The pills do exactly what they say and his mood does eventually stabilise, with time, and patience, and routine. He’s not emotionally dead to the world and he’s not seeking out its most distracting delights… There’s enough peace in his head to actually work through his grief and his depression.

There are still days when Elio finds his mouth is sealed shut, and motivation to participate in the world slips through his fingers like sand, but there are eventually more days when he sits at the piano and tries his hand at composing in genres he never has before, interested in exploring different modes of expression than just classical. 

At Sandro’s suggestion Elio begins talking to Isadora and Annella. He finds he can have something like a conversation with his mother, though she’s obviously not herself. It’s strangely comforting now that he’s accepting the situation. 

It makes him happy to see how happy Annella can be under Isadora’s experienced hands – she knows exactly how to make her charge enthusiastic and happy through her confusion, inventing all kinds of funny scenarios…

It’s childish happiness as she declines further, but it’s happiness. 

It’s infectious.

She seems to be deteriorating much, much faster now – they can’t even play a simple game most days. It makes it harder for Elio to stay positive but he’s got tools to counteract that now and he’s coping. It won’t be long now and then she’ll have peace.

Elio has become less and less religious steadily over the years, to the point where he’s not entirely certain he’d tick off Judaism as his chosen religion on a form… but he allows himself to find comfort in the idea of his mother going to join his father in some version of heaven, smiling a little at the thought and beginning to view his mother’s approaching death as a release – not something it’s sick to be relieved by.

_Maybe she’s just going home, and I’ll see her again…_

Elio is playing around on the piano developing a song he started after he and Oliver went through his parents’ record collection and listened to them in joyful remembrance rather than crushing grief. His mother is on the couch behind him reading a simple children’s book while Oliver is in town getting some groceries. A few minutes in she calls his name – just like last time.

He stops abruptly and turns around in shock. It’s exceedingly rare for her to recognise him these days… he knows from what Isadora has said that it’s sometimes a sign that the end is near, to have clarity this late in the game.

_“Oui, maman?”_

Annella tilts her head and beckons him over. It’s so different to last time, when he stumbled over and cried into her shirt. Today has been a good day for him, so he doesn’t drag his feet or slump his shoulders as he approaches… He wants her to know he’s okay.

“I feel strange, darling,” she says, her words slow but her voice her own. 

“What do you feel?” Elio asks as he sits down, turning his head to face his mother.

“I feel like there’s something I’m forgetting, and I can’t quite…” she trails off.

“It’s alright _maman,_ you don’t need to remember,” Elio reassures, leaning his head on her shoulder as she continues.

“It was something to do with you, you were… something was wrong, and I needed to…”

“I’m okay _maman,”_ he soothes, taking her weakened hand in his. “You’re right, something was wrong, but I’m okay now.”

And it’s true. He’s doing okay. He’s doing the best he thinks he can hope to in the circumstances.

“You’re going to be alright?” she asks, before her voice becomes more knowing, like she’s realised her situation. “…You’re going to be alright without me?”

“I’m going to be alright. It’s okay to let go,” Elio murmurs calmly, remembering her distress and how she tried to help him as best she could with the time she had left last time. He won’t do that to her again. This time it’s going to be calm, and still – calm and still like the beautiful afternoon outside, not like the dead. 

His mother’s last coherent memory of him is not going to be of him drunk, and he smiles at the thought.

“I really love you _maman,”_ Elio says, softly, just to let her know.

“I love you too, _tesoro,”_ Annella murmurs, with a soft smile in her voice.

And then they fall silent, not needing to speak. 

They sit there, mother and son, and allow the afternoon to fall upon the house… no need to do anything at all but enjoy their time left together and listen to the wind moving through Annella’s trees as the light turns golden…

Annella passes a few days later and Elio cries... but he also smiles, because he didn’t lie – he does know he’s going to be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed suffering with me for a second time! :D Please let me know your thoughts! 
> 
> I’m not going to lie I depend on comments to continue having a solitary care so :’)))
> 
> (The song I imagine Elio writing is a more chill piano version of [Swimming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2pSFd-K4uU) by Florence and the Machine bc relevant lyrics and I was listening to music from back in the day)
> 
> "Your songs remind me of swimming  
> Which I forgot when I started to sink  
> Dragged further away from the shore  
> And deeper into the drink
> 
> Sat on the bottom of the ocean,  
> A stern and stubborn rock  
> 'Cause your songs remind me of swimming,  
> But somehow I forgot
> 
> I was sinking, and now I'm sunk  
> And I was drinking, and now I'm drunk  
> Your songs remind me of swimming  
> But somehow I forgot"


End file.
